Muni sees rebound in ridership numbers with best month in over four years
San Francisco Muni's recovery from the pandemic downturn has hit another milestone. In September, more than half-million risers used the system every single weekday.
That marked the transit agency's best month since February of 2020, but the recovery is coming unevenly.
"Kids," laughed Muni rider Sue Jean Halvorsen when asked who she sees on buses. "A lot more seniors. A lot more handicapped people. Because I used to think, 'Oh, I can get on the bus and I have clear access to those first banks of seats.' No way. There's so many people there. It's almost a crowd."
Halveren was making her way across town on the 24 Divisadero bus. Ask her and she'll say this bus is usually pretty full.
"I think I see more and more people on the bus during the day than I ever used to," she said of her rides.
"This month marks a remarkable milestone, in that we hit more than half a million average daily weekday boardings," SFMTA Director of Transportation Jeffrey Tumlin said Tuesday SFMTA Board meeting.
An average of 521,000 passengers last month puts Muni at 74% of its pre-pandemic ridership, a jump of 8% from September of last year. And the ridership deficit that remains is increasingly tied to one function of the system.
"Pre COVID, our highest ridership station in the entire system was Montgomery Street station," Tumlin explained. "Montgomery Street station is at 28% of pre-COVID ridership recovery."
Downtown and metro traffic is up, but not as much as the rest of the system, including some bus routes that are now running above their pre-pandemic ridership.
"And so in the city that has lost most transit riders due to simply a loss of office commuters, we have compensated by having some of the highest ridership recovery rates in the world on some of our non-downtown commute lines," Tumlin told the SFMTA Board.
"Yeah. I think there's more people. Definitely more people," Halvorsen said. "But it is just as eclectic as ever."
On the weekends, Muni is doing even better at 92% of its pre-pandemic ridership. And that 18% differential from the weekdays further highlights the drop in downtown business traffic. Rebuilding that is something Muni describes as work progress, but systemwide numbers are slowly improving.